Introduction

What is this thing I am making, exactly?

Vision

I comes down to this: An engine to play story-based games in it. Imagine an RPG, but without the (often tedious) combat (and no graphics, I'm not quite rich enough to pay 50 artists for three years). My objective was to write a game which can be extended by fans and which uses some of the ideas that have shaped game design in the last ten years, but without all the typical crap in AAA-titles, such as long and boring combat just to make the game last longer. 

I would hope that people will pick up on the idea of writing their own stories or small storylets, and share them with each other. If possible, it would be nice if everyone would try to write in an action to get from a central transport hub to their respective places in some way (if you want to write your own locations, which I hope), or add to the general fundus. I kindly ask that you do not edit somebody else's work and pass it off as your own (and to be clear: that would be a copyright-infringement), but you are of course free to take their work as inspiration.

Motivation

See here: http://blown-to-bits.blogspot.com/2011/04/story-engine-alpha-1.html

Technology

The engine runs on flash 10, and will read all .xml files in its program folder. Pictures  are loaded with paths respective to that folder too. Currently, write or administration access is not needed (mostly because one cannot save their game, yet).

I plan to offer a correct XML-schema and validation at some point, but that is really boring to program, so I skipped it for now.

Setting (of the demo)

The setting and basic examples are very loosely based on Eclipse Phase (by Posthuman Studios, free to download and it's worth a read or play in any case), with some stats, ideas and topics taken from there. The rules used are quite different though. 

I have decided on a handful of "official" things. Do not write redundant stats such as Strength or Health, and try to be a bit original.

Stats: Reflexes, Lucidity, Determination, Suaveness, Muscles, Trauma

Items: Character Creation Credits, Yen (though more currencies and exchange actions are an obvious path to take)

Legal crap

This stuff is copyright 2011, Kajetan Abt. I used a few pictures I found on image boards, such as /tg/booru. If you made them and want to be credited or have them taken down, just tell me.

You are free to use everything as long as you don't try to sell it. You may (try to) sell stories you write yourself, of course, since you still own that copyright. I only claim the engine and the storylets I wrote myself.

No restrictions apply on what you can write. If it is good, I would like to read it, and I will possibly link to it.